Greece's powerful Orthodox Church called on its faithful Thursday to boycott the upcoming movie Da Vinci Code which will be released in Taiwan on May 18, newspaper reports said.
Greece's Holy Synod said it would issue pamphlets ahead of the movie's Greek premiere warning citizens not to go see the movie to "protect the Christian tradition."
The church, which represents about 97 percent of Greece's 11 million population, did not rule out the possibility of calling on Greeks to protest outside of theaters.
Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou star in Ron Howards's movie, taken from Dan Brown's controversial bestseller The Da Vinci Code.
Lost sales from pirated DVD movies and Internet downloads are higher than previously thought, a report in the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.
A study showed the industry was losing US$6.1 billion annually in global wholesale revenue, about 75 percent higher than earlier estimates, it said.
Losses came not only from fewer ticket sales, but also from fewer DVD sales, considered one of the industry's biggest profit centers, the report cited unnamed sources as saying.
The newspaper said some in the US movies industry sought to suppress the report.
According to the report, losses in the US alone totaled almost US$1.3 billion.
John Malkovich's new film has him playing an Englishman who pretends he is Stanley Kubrick in what is billed as a "true-ish" story about a conman who duped dozens of people into thinking he was the reclusive director.
Colour me Kubrick, showing at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, has already drawn comparisons to Being John Malkovich because of its cerebral approach to questions of identity and celebrity.
But it is essentially a comedy that gives Malkovich the chance to revel in outlandish accents, behavior and costumes, from stockings and stilettos to oversized pajamas and foppish suits and cravats. The soundtrack echoes Kubrick's own films, including the famous theme from 2001: Space Odyssey.
Alan Conway, an alcoholic and small-time swindler, managed to pass himself off as the famously publicity-shy Kubrick for years until he was unmasked by a newspaper. Even then he convinced psychiatrists he was mentally ill, escaping prosecution for duping dozens of gullible victims into parting with their cash and sometimes their virtue.
"Everybody believed it," said Michael Fitzgerald, who produced the film written by Kubrick's personal assistant Anthony Frewin.
"Stanley Kubrick's wife still gets letters from parents of young men who were, what's the word, `pleasured' by him, regretting his death, but saying he had done unspeakable things to their children," he said.
With his debonair look, eccentric outfits and gift of the gab, Conway takes in everyone from the local pharmacist, to the managers of a heavy metal band, to a comedian played by British star Jim Davidson.
The biologist in Randy Olson cringed at news reports of evangelical Christians challenging the teaching of evolution to schoolchildren in places such as Kansas on the grounds it was just a theory.
But the filmmaker in him feels just as strongly that scientists have done a lousy job explaining their side of the debate.
The result is Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus, a humorous and entertaining documentary that premiered at New York's Tribeca Film Festival this week.
The film shines a spotlight on "intelligent design," a school of thought that says many of the seemingly miraculous and complex elements of nature must be the work of an intelligent designer -- namely God.
The controversy is raging in the US as intelligent design proponents face off in court with scientists who say evolution is supported by fossils and other evidence. So far, courts have struck down teaching intelligent design in science classrooms as a violation of the wall between church and state.
Other films that premiered at the festival include Fat Girls by the youngest film director at this year's event, 21-year-old Ash Christian. Christian is living proof that being a chubby gay kid from Paris, Texas, doesn't mean you can't direct and star in a movie. Fat Girls is a semi-autobiographical comedy about awkward Texas teenager, Rodney, and his friend, Sabrina, who is so fat that in a moment of passion with her boyfriend in a car, her rear end gets stuck in the steering wheel.
Donald Sutherland has played plenty of bad guys in his time and in his new film Land of the Blind he gets to explore the roots of evil and how the victim can become the tyrant and torturer. The political satire, which had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, stars Sutherland as an imprisoned playwright who convinces a soldier, played by Ralph Fiennes, to help assassinate a tyrannical dictator in an unnamed country.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built
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